Seven Tenets to Talent Building

Here starts a blog series on Human Resource Planning (HRP) in the workplace.  Also known as Talent Building, the idea is to improve and optimize the skills, knowledge, productivity and potential of the collective workforce to raise the value of the firm.  This is HR’s most important role—to identify the current best and brightest in the shop; to get even better people on board; to keep these top performers engaged; to grow and share their talents across the enterprise; and apply this wisdom to create value for customers and  make more money.

It’s a “knowledge economy” after all where information in the brain and database rule—trade secrets you know.  Perhaps so. But there is nothing new about the fact that smart people who get things done make all the difference. Companies blessed with a lot of top notch performers do exceptionally better than companies without. Indeed, a thoughtful talent building strategy deployed over several years can transform a company from good to great.

A Decision Away

You can start now.  Right now. True Human Resource Planning can begin at any time and should be done all the time.  The ability to do it  is not affected by the hiring market, economic conditions, the state of your finances or anything like that.  It doesn’t require changes in the organization chart, a new grading system or formal career paths across the hierarchy. Great pay and meaningful rewards are definitely  involved; however, HRP usually does not require a big increase in payroll cost– rather a big shift on how you allocate those costs (more on that later). Large capital investments, new software and extravagant marketing efforts to push your employer brand–are  not required.  No expensive new training programs either; although heightened leadership standards and efficient internal communications are crucial.

Bold leaders are a decision away from making talent building a reality at your company.  But here’s the rub: Strange as this sounds on the surface, Human Resource Departments are notoriously ineffective at talent building. Indeed, some personnel functions are keen to protect mediocrity.  How many times has your HR function slowed or stopped management  from firing a lousy employee? Or has your HR function-ever pushed a candidate who was not quite right for the job?  Have you ever settled on a lesser hire because you couldn’t go above the pay range to afford the one you really wanted?  Have you ever snatched up a candidate most likely to fill the chair because HR was slow as snails to present anyone else even close to qualified?  Yes, yes, yes–it happens all the time. Not good and definitely not talent building.

In fact, most of the problem has to do with a misunderstanding what true Human Resource Planning is really all about. Instead HR misdirects their energy to incremental change strategies, such as more thorough candidate screening, better on-boarding, neato training and forced, structured performance feedback techniques and tools.  And that stuff just doesn’t change the game.   Never did, never will.   But that’s the past.  Time to Switch HR.  You are a decision away. Let’s get started…

What is Human Resource Planning?

Let’s start with a high level overview, then drill down to specifics in future posts.   First, Human Resource Planning (HRP) is not recruiting, not even close. Misdirected effort on candidate sourcing and screening techniques  does not move the meter. Second, HRP starts with an honest inventory of your current talent base from top executive to entry level employee. Then you need to repeat it until you get it right. Third, successful talent building requires high-performance standards among executive  leadership, decisive judgment about people’s abilities and utter intolerance for mediocrity.  In fact, these are crucial. Number four, a proactive, continuous and fast talent pipeline is a must.  This means that churn via desired strategic turnover is good because it enables a constant new talent stream into the organization. Hiring in great people is far more effective than training just okay existing personnel. Fifth, people investment and rewards must focus on the top 20% of highest job performers. Much in HR is instead preoccupied with pay equity as if all job performance behavior were equal. Serving as policy-wonk to those few employees who are doing the wrong things doesn’t help much either.  So you need to Switch HR there.  Sixth, a Strategic Communications infrastructure is required. Distributed knowledge, openness and empowerment by information are absolutes for effective talent building to firmly root and grow. And number seven, company wide knowledge sharing is a business imperative.  Managers and employees who don’t practice it are failing at a key and universal  job responsibility.

Okay, that lays the foundation.  I call these the Seven Tenets Talent Building– Seven things you need to know and practice to make Human Resource Planning a reality in your organizations.   Here they are again in bullet list format updated by hyperlink as we publish new stuff:

• INTRO: Seven Tenets to Talent Building
• HRP 1: Talent Building is Not Recruiting;
• HRP 2: Inventory Your Talent Base
• HRP 3: High Performance Leadership
• HRP 1, 2, 3 Halfway There (Interim Post)
• HRP 4: The Talent Pipeline
• HRP 5: Focus on Top Notch Performance
• HRP 6: Strategic Communications Infrastructure
• HRP 7: Knowledge Sharing as Universal Requirement

Make a note.  Each of these will be the subject of future posts. If you follow the entire series and apply it, you will have everything required for successful Talent Building.  Your company will be better for it.  Way better.  The next post  brings home tenet number one–that Human Resource Planning is not about recruiting.  Then we will look at exactly what you have to do to get started.